One of the things that Baba wanted to see while he was here in London was the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.  Specifically, he wanted to see the three prototype clocks that were created in order to allow people to keep time aboard ships (and thus be able to chart longitude).

It’s on the other side of London from us, so a few trains later we arrived at the Cutty Sark station and started to make our way through Greenwich Park.  It’s always a busy area with tourists and there’s quite a few good reasons.  One of which is the top of the hill makes for a great photographic spot with brilliant views of Canary Wharf dominating the skyline.

We did a few portrait shots outside and then paid the admission fee to enter the observatory.  It’s an interesting museum of sorts, with an emphasis on nautical history which doesn’t generally interest me.  There were some interesting sights to photograph though, so that always keeps me busy.

I think my favourite part of the experience was seeing the green laser that’s projected out along the meridian up close.  It’s really intense and you can see it for miles on the top of the hill.  It looks rather cool firing through Canary Wharf in the distance if you ask me.

After that, we were off to our favourite pub in London.  The Prospect of Whitby is a great old pub that always has excellent ales on tap and the food is pretty good as well.  We’re always sitting upstairs in the small room that used to house bare knuckle boxing matches (according to a plaque on one of the walls).   They also claim that the table nearest the window in this room was a personal favourite of Queen (or princess?  I don’t recall) Anne.

To be honest, they had me at ‘excellent ales’ anyway.

More images of the day in the gallery.

It wasn’t intentional, but we happened to be in and around the Westminster area on Remembrance Day weekend this year.  The plan was just to do some standard sight seeing and get a few photos of Baba at the parliament buildings (which we did), but it’s always interesting and humbling to see the displays set out to mark the occasion.

The lawns of Westminster Abby are completely transformed for the weekend.  All along the walkways are thousands and thousands of tiny memorial crosses, divided up into the military units they represent, covered in notes, photos, mementos and words of thanks.  I’m not certain if the crosses are supposed to represent a one-to-one relationship with the soldiers who’ve died in one of the many wars starting with WWI, but I do know there are an awful lot of crosses and it certainly makes you stop and think.

Moving on from the Abbey we crossed the road and took a few photos of the lovely fall colours in Victoria Tower Gardens next to parliament before crossing the river at Lambeth Bridge.

It’s a nice day out and a good walk, especially this end of Westminster as it avoids most of the major touristy areas once you’re away from parliament and the abbey.  We stopped for a bit of lunch at a cute riverside restaurant on the south bank of the Thames before gathering our things and heading back home.

There are a few more images in the gallery as always!

I met up with a few of the regulars from POTN to do some street shooting in and around the Camden markets.  I’ve done quite a few meet ‘n shoots with these guys before but they’re generally pretty free form in their focus (as in, they lack focus).  This meet had a minor stipulation that you’ll only need to bring along 1 lens, a 50mm.

So that’s exactly what we did, with the exception of Lee’s old film camera he dusted off and brought along (which may have been 50mm, but more likely 35).  I generally have fun at these meets and this day was no exception, but I think it brought home for me a very important lesson.  I don’t really like street shooting.

I think the main reason I don’t enjoy this style of photography that much is that for me, the most interesting images to be made are photos of the people out on the street.  The problem with that is I never feel comfortable aiming my camera at unsuspecting, perhaps even unwilling, subjects.  I personally don’t mind having my own photo taken on the streets (being as glamorous as I am, you just get used to it), but I don’t know how each person will react to the same treatment.  I don’t think I’m afraid of getting into a confrontation, but for some reason I am afraid of making someone uncomfortable.

At the end of a shoot like this, I always feel let down.  Not so much over the images I have taken, but because of the images I didn’t take.  I usually try to step out of my comfort zone, but I think this is one area that I’ll just leave to the experts.

There are a few more images from the day in the gallery.

After last years successful trash the dress shoot we knew we wanted to have another crack at it.  Steve did his usual thing of buying used wedding dresses off of ebay and then soliciting models through model mayham.  What started off as 10 willing girls quickly dwindled down to 3 and we were blessed the lovely Shez, Chelsea and Alice.

The day started off as most of our photo shoots do.  A little behind on the time schedule and a little bewildered about where we were supposed to be.  We quickly found our bearings and made our way to an odd little area of Hounslow Heath that was part of a disused rail line.  Lots of curved, 6 foot retaining walls covered in graffiti making up a line of semi-circles.  I can only assume these were used for turning rail cars?  Very odd.

The plan for the day was to get warmed up doing a few standard shots of the girls in their respective wedding dresses before we broke out the paints and destroyed said dresses.  The models were great and very easy to work with, which is always a bonus as most of us there don’t have much experience in directing people how to pose.

The best bit of the day for me though was the 2 local kids who happened to be rummaging around looking for ‘not quite empty’ tins of spray paint so they could practice their tagging.  We drafted them in to spray the models with paint instead of wasting it covering up decent graffiti with their names and mostly illegible phallic drawings.  As a bonus, one had a hoodie on and we had a spare handy for the other so we could complete the asbo-tot image.

After the kids were called away by a slightly angry mom on a phone, we carried on with the planned paint fight.  I’ve got a few images that have yet to be processed of the paint fight, but like last time it was fairly chaotic and I generally wasn’t happy with the results.

Overall though, it was a brilliant day and we all walked away with some great images.  Thanks to Rich, Rob and Steve (don’t know your website Steve) for all of the ideas and help with the shots.  Always great working with you guys.  Oh, and I’m very happy I broke my ‘no new gear this year’ and picked up a 125cm softbox and tri-flash adapter.  Soooo worth it!

More photos in the gallery and a few more to come over the next week or two.

One of the nice things about my recent move to the Earls Court area is its immediate access to the Earls Court area.  This may seem redundant, and likely is, but it’s just nice to have some fairly large, well used event centers within walking distance to my home.  After the ComicCon a couple of weeks ago, Robert and I as well as Danni and I went to this years Hyper Japan (on Saturday and Sunday respectively).

It was an interesting mix of Japanese cutesy-culture products, food, calligraphy & origami instructional classes, cultural education, video games and of course cosplay.  Part of the proceeds went to the Japanese relief fund as well, which was nice to see.

The day that Danni and I went (Sunday) was the Square Enix cosplay competition so there were plenty of Final Fantasy characters roaming the event center.  I’m always amazed at the amount of work these kids put into the costumes and we stayed to watch the contest which was interesting.  I’d always assumed it was just a matter of walking out on stage to display your efforts, but most put on mini performances in line with the characters they were depicting which was really impressive (even if I didn’t get the inside jokes of a lot of them).

I’m told there was also a Lolita fashion show which we missed, but it makes sense as there were an awful lot of girls dressed up that way.  The aptly named Tofu Cute girls were there again, but at the risk of developing a stalker like status I didn’t take another photo.  Instead, there were a couple of over-the-top cutesy girls at the exit when we were leaving that kindly posed for photos.

It was a very cool day out and difficult to resist making a lot of impulse buys (which I managed to do).  If it’s in the neighbourhood again next year I’ll definitely be returning.  A word of advice if you plan to attend as well: Go Early.  The queue on Saturday was around the block ridiculous, and that was for ticket holders.

Couple more shots in the gallery.